


Fallen

by randi2204



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-22
Updated: 2010-07-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 18:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randi2204/pseuds/randi2204
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack didn't know where the wings had come from – they were just always there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fallen

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a lovely piece of art by [manic_intent](http://manic-intent.livejournal.com/profile).

Disclaimer: These pretty boys sail under the flag of the Mouse.  Not mine, no money, only playing.

 

Fallen

 

Jack didn’t know where the wings had come from – they were just always there.

 

He could see them, anytime he looked into his mum’s looking glass or some bit of still water.  They didn’t poke any holes in his clothes, either; there they were, at his shoulders, whatever he wore.  Pretty little things, just the right size for a lad, and they stayed white no matter how dirty he got.  He could have a scrap with one of the other pirate-lets running around, rolling over and over in the mud until they were both covered with it, and those wings would still be just as bright as ever.

 

He was sure he didn’t get them from his mum, because no matter how hard he looked at her, he couldn’t ever see them.  He got her eyes, everyone said, and he could see he looked a lot like her otherwise – thin wiry body, the shape of his face – but he never saw her with wings.

 

Da was often away – well, couldn’t very well be a pirate and not go a-piratin’, and, as he said, someone had to bring home the loot – but whenever he was at home, Jack didn’t find any wings on him, either.  He knew Da was really his Da in little telling ways that were the same between them.  Some lads couldn’t tell who their father was, because their mothers couldn’t have told them, but there wasn’t much shame in that where they lived; they were pirate children and pirates took care of their own.

 

After a while, Jack decided that maybe everyone had wings like his, and you just couldn’t _see_ any but your own.  That satisfied him for a spell, for he never saw wings on anyone else around.  He liked to imagine – Mum’s would be a delicate dusky rose, small and graceful like her.  Da’s had to be bigger, fiercer, and in his mind, Jack pictured them like an eagle’s or hawk’s, as brown as the wind had tanned his skin.  Of course, everyone having their own wings that no one else could see made it sound like they were all angels, like he’d heard about while peeking in the church doors.  ‘Twas all kinds of shiny inside, and he was trying to work out a way to nick some with none the wiser when the Padre started telling about angels, and he couldn’t help but listen.

 

Jack didn’t figure he was an angel, much, he was sure, to his parents’ relief, nor were most of the people he knew, but still, discounting that, it stood to reason that if _he_ had wings, so did everyone else.

 

It was only after he’d done the expected thing (for the last time) and run away to sea that he discovered he was wrong.  On the first prize he took while on Captain Barton’s crew, he saw a boy, not much younger than himself, and he had wings, too.  That meant that when he didn’t see anyone else’s wings, they weren’t hidden – it mean they really _didn’t_ have them.  And that, Jack realized, meant he was special.

 

He saw a few others with wings as he got out into the wide free world – a tavern-keeper in Dakar, a sailor from Bombay, the best whore in Tortuga, and others besides.  It didn’t matter who they were, though; he was always drawn to them.  They never mentioned his wings, so he never did theirs.  A few of them had wings tinged with grey, but most of them were white, somewhat bigger than his own.  His had never grown much, not since he was a stripling.  They weren’t like the great eagle wings he’d always thought Da had.  They reminded him more of a sparrow’s, small and quick, so that’s why he took the name.  Still, small or not, he had them and most didn’t, and that was something.

 

Then he lost the _Pearl_, and the wings didn’t seem to matter much any longer.  Having wings didn’t save that whore from dying of fever, either, and he simply stopped looking for them on the people he’d meet.

 

What brought him to Port Royal, Jack didn’t know – maybe just to beard the pirate hunter in his den? – but he trusted that sense, and followed it.  And part of him was glad he did, for all that it got him a dawn appointment with the hangman.  James Norrington had the biggest, purest, whitest wings he’d ever seen.  They swept out from his shoulders truly like an angel’s, and fairly glowed.  They were so lovely that they honestly (if he was being even more dishonestly honest than usual) took his breath away, as did the man to whom they were attached.

 

Throughout the adventure that followed – Barbossa’s not-really-unexpected betrayal, Elizabeth’s ignorant comments, Will’s too-trusting distrust – it was Norrington’s scathing comments and cool indifference that flayed him the most.  Jack wanted nothing more than to bask in the glory of those wings – and maybe enjoy himself a little with James himself – but Norrington would have none of it.  And that made his _second_ appointment with the hangman even more painful.  Not for the first time, he wanted to say something – _Don’t you see my wings? Aren’t we the same?_ – but Norrington said nothing, so he couldn’t either.  After his daring escape, he tried to put the pretty Commodore with his pretty wings from his mind, and only let himself think of the man when he was too close to ignore.

 

Sometimes, as the _Pearl_ caught the wind and sped from the Commodore’s reach, Jack would look back over his shoulder, telling himself he was only making sure that the _Dauntless_ was foundered, that he wasn’t hoping for just a glimpse of wings.  They always seemed smaller than he recalled, but that was just distance, right?

 

Then Norrington stopped chasing him, and for nigh on a year, Jack didn’t have to force himself not to think of him anymore.

 

Which was probably why it came as such a shock to see the man at the Faithful Bride in Tortuga – not as a Commodore of the fleet, but as a drunken sailor, unkempt and filthy.  Still, it wasn’t pity that told him to sign Norrington on, either – even soaked in rum, he still held himself Navy straight and tall, still spoke in crisp, cutting tones.  No, not pity, Jack told himself, but a need to keep his enemy near.

 

Besides, once he’d been dunked in some clean water and trimmed the scraggle into some semblance of order, he looked… well, quite lovely still, Jack supposed.

 

On a sailor’s ration of grog, James spoke only when spoken to, and then said as little as possible.  He obeyed Jack’s orders silently, performed whatever task was set to him, and without complaint.  He appeared to be a fine sailor, but Jack still watched him close, not wanting to wake up with a sword at his neck – or worse.

 

It was therefore some time before Jack bethought himself of James’s wings.  He’d spent so much time resenting the man for not seeing _his_ wings – or not caring – that he’d not even wondered about the man’s own, and something that felt very much like _guilt_ twitched in his gut.

 

In front of him, James trudged through the sand – they’d rowed into an islet to refill the water casks and get a little fresh meat, if possible – and Jack looked… and couldn’t see James’s wings.

 

For the first time, he felt a thrill of fear.  What had happened?  Where were those great glowing things of beauty he’d seen at Port Royal?  They were the only ones he’d ever seen that really filled him with not only envy but awe, and now… they weren’t there.

 

Frowning, confused, Jack’s gaze wandered down to James’s shadow.

 

Something, yes, out of his back, dark silhouette on the golden sand, similar to Jack’s own – and when he looked up again, he saw them.  They were there, tiny shriveled things, smaller even than Jack’s own, and _black_.  Every feather was blacker than pitch, blacker than a moonless, starless night.  Even as he watched, horror-struck, one feather broke off and drifted away, dissolving into nothingness.

 

A moment later, James stumbled, then collapsed, stretching his length in the sand, and Jack felt a terror he’d never before known, not when facing undead pirates, not when staring at the noose.  Before he knew what he was about, he knelt beside James, calling his name.  James’s eyes glittered with fever when he opened them, his cheeks pale with it, and when Jack rolled him over and tried to pull him to sit upright again with a double fist-full of his coat, an alarming number of feathers detached from his stunted wings.

 

A thousand thoughts whirled through Jack’s brain in that moment – _Was it the rum that did this, or the lack?  Was it painful, and did the rum numb that pain?_  Most of all, though, he wanted to know when it started, and how could he bloody well _stop it?_  He didn’t want James to die.

 

It was an amazingly clearing bit of knowledge.  All the wariness and distrust that he’d cultivated, the jealousy and petty words… it all fell away, clouds before a fresh wind.  It was like someone was telling him that he _could_ admire James.  He could care about him, and not only could, but _did_.  And he realized something else; that the wings were a measure, not of how _good_ you were, how like an angel, but – possibly – of what you gave of yourself for others.  What you didn’t expect returned, and didn’t miss.  And if you lost the belief that what you gave – what you _sacrificed_ – was of value…

 

“I fell.”

 

James’s murmur, nearly inaudible over the crash of the waves, pulled Jack back from his thoughts.  His heart wrenched in his chest when the words registered, and an immense sadness, raw and dark and aching, filled him.  He drew James close, tucking his head in the crook of his neck, still holding onto his coat with one hand, not wanting to touch his nearly skeletal wings for fear of increasing James’s pain.

 

“No, James,” he replied in a whisper, and they weren’t the first true words he’d said to James, but they were the most heartfelt.  “You didn’t fall, love, you were pushed.”

 

And at the same instant Jack felt a great surge in his wings, as if they grew to a size to rival the ones James still carried in his memory – at that same instant, James smiled and sighed against his neck, and his wings – bare now of feathers – fell from his shoulders and melted into the sand.

 

***

April 20, 2009


End file.
